Pacific Data Images
Pacific Data Images (PDI) was an American computer animated production company that was bought by DreamWorks SKG in 2000. It was renamed PDI/DreamWorks and was half of DreamWorks Animation SKG, Inc., the public company formed by merging PDI and the feature animation division of DreamWorks. History PDI was founded in 1980 by Carl Rosendahl with a loan of $25,000 from his father. He was joined in 1981 by Richard Chuang and in 1982 by Glenn Entis. Richard and Glenn wrote the foundation of the in-house computer animation software that was to be used for the next two decades. They started work on 3D software at the end of 1981, and 3D production started in the fall of 1982. The initial goal of the company was "Entertainment using 3D computer animation". By the time PDI reached its 25th anniversary in 2005, it had completed over 1000 projects and grown to over 400 employees. In January 2015, DreamWorks announced they were shutting down the studio. 1980-1987: Early years The first computer at PDI was a DEC PDP 11/44 with 128 kilobytes of memory. This was a lot of memory given that the computer had only 64 kilobytes (16-bits) of address space. It had a 20 megabyte disk. Attached to this was a $65,000 framebuffer which has a resolution of 512x512 and was 32 bits deep. The first 3D image rendered at PDI was done on March 12, 1982. The image was simply a 4 by 4 grid of spheres of varying colors. The spheres were not polygonal, they were implicitly rendered and were fully anti-aliased. The resulting image was 512 by 480 by 24 (8 bits for red, green and blue channels) which took 2 minutes to render. The PDP-11 was soon replaced by a DEC VAX-11/780 and later PDI shifted to another superminicomputer called the Ridge32. This machine was 2-4 times faster than the VAX-11/780 at a fraction of the cost. 1987-1990: transition PDI's early focus was on network TV productions since they captured over 50% of that market in 1985. However, in 1990, PDI introduced the digital film scanning process. This process was used to popularize automated rig remover and image touch-up. PDI was also instrumental in introducing performance animation for theme parks, ads and movies. This started with a project for a real time performance character for Jim Henson Productions. 1990-1995: character animation Early in 1990, Tim Johnson and Rex Grignon officially formed PDI's Character Animation Group with the mandate to develop a group of artists with the creative and technical skills needed to produce a feature-length CG-animated film. The group originally consisted of Johnson, Grignon, Raman Hui, Glenn McQueen, Beth Hofer, Dick Walsh, Karen Schneider and Eric Darnell. Under the auspices of the group, PDI's commercial character animation skills grew and numerous notable short films were produced. Among these are Gas Planet (1992), Sleepy Guy, Brick-a-Brac (1995), Gabola the Great (1997), Fishing (1999) and Fat Cat on a Diet. 1995-2015: feature films PDI's first feature film Antz was released by DreamWorks Pictures in 1998. This was followed by Shrek in 2001. Category:Companies